Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 22 January 1999:
Vol. 283. no. 5401, p. 468
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5401.468
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

News of the Week

PALEONTOLOGY
Stunning Fossil Shows Breath of a Dinosaur

Bernice Wuethrich

A team led by a respiratory physiologist has used an ultraviolet lamp, which can coax out patterns invisible in ordinary light, to conjure up the outlines of the internal organs of a 100-million-year-old dinosaur. Now the researcher and his colleagues are using the arrangement of internal organs to bolster their idea that dinosaur lungs were structurally simple, most resembling those of living crocodiles. Their analysis, presented on page 514, would imply that these animals were basically cold-blooded, but the researchers think that these simple lungs were also able to power periods of high metabolism and intense activity, giving a hybrid answer to the old question of whether dinosaurs were cold- or warm-blooded. Not everyone is convinced, but many researchers are intrigued by the idea.

Read the Full Text

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)